If you are a regular attendant of this forum, MD, you are likely aware of the controversy surrounding Akita T's analysis of the technetium bottleneck. Some of you may also be aware of a particular poster, Lord XSiV. Suffice to say, these two individuals disagree strongly with eachother.

Of late, it has become fashionable to accuse Lord XSiV of being an alt of Akita. And indeed, this is a potentially plausible scenario - passionate disagreement over Akita T's analysis may influence speculators and cause an artificial deflation of prices. If Akita's analysis is indeed correct, this speculator panic would drop large amounts of undervalued stock on the market which could be snatched up cheaply. Later, as the market orients correctly, the price would go back up to its "true" value. And Akita has just made mint.

The alternative, of course, is that Lord XSiV is not an alt at all. He may just be an individual who strongly disagrees with Akita (in a rather flagrant manner). Lord XSiV may or may not be correct, but the accuracy of his prediction is no longer tied to Akita's subsequent gain, as they are working independently.

To tease apart this relationship, I undertook an analysis of these two players by datamining their posts on the EveO Forum. Below are my preliminary findings.

MethodologyTo perform this analysis, I constructed a set of PHP scripts to automate the process of data retrieval. First, a database table was populated with all threads (and associated forum) that Akita T or Lord XSiV had ever posted in. Next, these threads were sc****d and every post by Akita/Lord were stored, as well as their timestamp. Analysis was performed by querying this database to answer particular questions.

Results

First PostAkita: 2006.04.07 18:47:00Lord: 2003.12.25 00:58:00

Number of threads :Akita: 11,254Lord: 334

Number of PostsAkita: 21,226Lord: 682

Total Posts over TimeIn this graph we see a representation of posting quantity over time. It is immediately apparent that Akita is a prolific poster, thus making it difficult to see the details of Lord XSiV. This will be remedied in the following graphs. What is interesting is that Lord began posting almost three years prior to Akita. Despite this, there are some interesting peaks near December 2006/March 2007 and September 2007 which look similar in both lines. Also interesting is the inverse relationship in December 2009. This is not sufficient to incriminate either party - it is well known that activity and subscription cycles are subject to many outside factors (expansions, alliance wars, holidays, semester schedules, tournaments, etc).

Posted - 2010.01.10 08:21:00 -
[2]Percentage of Total Posts over TimeThis is an alternate view of the previous data. The data was transformed such that each date represents a percentage of the total posts made by an individual. Here we can see that while Akita maintains a fairly uniform 3-4% activity each month, Lord's burst of activity between December 2006 and March 2007 accounted for 35% of his posts to date. Superficially, July 07 and March-June 08 correlate closely, potentially suggesting similar activity levels, which would be expected of a Main-Alt relationship. Interesting, July 07 for Lord appears to be a time-shifted version of Akita's September 07 data. This suggets that there are variations in activity level which may be accounted for by two independent players. Lastly, the inverse relationship seen in December 09 appears even more drastic when in the context of percentage of total posts.

Normalized Posts over TimeAnother transormation of the same data, this time normalized against the largest value in each poster's history. The month with the most posts obtains a value of one (1) and the rest are scaled proportionally. Here we see similar trends highlighted in the previous examinations, although the correlations appear much stronger in this view.

Forum ActivityThese pie charts show the percentage of posts in particular forums. It seems these two individuals have different posting preferences - Lord tends to post in GD, MD and COAD while Akita posts in GD and a variety of other forums. Few correlations can be discerned from this data, as there may be many confounding factors. Many people use alts to post things they do not want associated with their main; in this respect, Lord might fit as an alt due to the heavy presence in COAD. On the other hand, alts may be used to bolster or argue with a main (as theorized in MD), which this data may or may not support. Lastly, the sheer quantity of posts by Akita may be smoothing over more interesting data, effectively getting lost amongs all the other posts. A more detailed year-by-year analysis may show more interesting trends; however, this was not performed.

Timezone AnalysisA more rigorous analysis involves looking at the actual post times of an individual. This graph shows the percentage of posts each individual makes on a particular hour (in 24-hr format). Here, for the first time, we can see a clear demarcation between Akita and Lord. Akita's data is inherently "smoother" than Lord's due to her incredibly prolific posting history, but the trends are easily seen. While both individuals seem to post at all hours, the peak posting hours appear almost 12 hours phase-shifted. This is the first strong indication that these two posters are in fact two different people.

Lastly, another test was performed to see if any posts "overlapped", such that two posts were made at the same time. Theoretically, a player is unlikely to post from both accounts in a very short amount of time. Unfortunately, the fidelity of this test was limited by CCP's forum software, which only records to the nearest minute. Nonetheless, eight (8) instances were found where Lord and Akita posted at the "same time" (i.e. within 60 seconds of each other, likely less). A further 56 instances were found where posts were within four minutes, the upper cutoff of my test. Moreover, many of these posts were in completely separate forums. It is hard to rationalize why a player would post to separate forums in rapid succession with separate accounts - multiple times. Especially considering the irritating login/logout/login sequence on CCP's forum, I find this to be a very telling result.

ConclusionsThese results are far from being 100% conclusive, but I believe it paints a fairly convincing argument. I had originally planned for more detailed tests, such as analyzing "trains" of posts, correlation between thread posts, analysis of "posting partners", etc. However, I don't believe this is necessary. The timezone and "overlapping" post data strongly suggests that Akita T and Lord XSiV are indeed two separate individuals. Barring that, Akita T has used an alt in a very cunning (and relatively aspie) manner. If this is the case, my respect and sympathies go out to you.

With that said, several possibilities remain open. Characters can be traded and sold easily. While neither of these characters have been openly sold in Character Bazarr, it is possible that ownership has changed hands privately. Character transfer would throw off any historical analysis, such as the one presented here. Secondly, it is still possible that Lord is "working" with or for Akita. A friend, business partner or ally may be performing the service of disagreeing with Akita to raise panic among speculators. This might also jive with the timzeone data. Alas, this can not be determined by any type of forum posting analysis.

Lastly, it is possibility that Lord and Akita are two separate individuals who happen to disagree strongly. Stranger things have been seen certainly. :)

I hope you have enjoyed this analysis. In all likelihood this data was forged and both Akita and Lord are my alts, since I'm a goon. And goons like to ruin games. Take what I've said above as you will.

Posted - 2010.01.10 09:33:00 -
[9]
This is certainly thorough. I agree with your conclusions assuming the data is correct (and I have no reason to believe it isn't correct). In before Akita T and in before "forums are serious business"

Originally by:Jim RaynorEVE needs danger, EVE needs risks, EVE needs combat, even piracy, without these things, the game stagnates to a trivial game centering around bloating your wallet with no purpose.

Posted - 2010.01.10 11:37:00 -
[13]
Another approach you could try to unmask the real identity is perform some statistical analysis on the posting of both Akita T and Lord XSiV to fingerprint their writing styles and compare to see if they are the same person.

Of course you would need lots of sample material to base the analysis off. There are tools to help, there is a quick and dirty demonstration script called 'Unmask' available from here:

Posted - 2010.01.10 13:22:00 -
[15]
Don't forget... Lord was once a member of "Eve Defence Force" and Akita is a member of "Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force" OMG! Both corp names have "Force" in them!!!! I call spies!

Posted - 2010.01.10 16:30:00 -
[21]
It's nice to see Goons partaking in the MD community in preparation for their retreat to hi-sec. I think it shows some foresight and etiquette, and I look forward to helping their many members arrange their future mining, production, and research enterprises.

Originally by:MillimageIt only raises the question of how you choose to use your free time...

Spaceships are serious business

Originally by:Coconut Joewould it be possible for you to post what tools you used to get these results so that others might replicate them?

Sure. I'll compile the database and PHP scripts into a package later today. Be warned, the PHP code is unremittingly ugly because it was written as a one-off tool. Excel 2007 was used to generate the graphs (by "exporting" database queries as csv files).

Originally by:AzrelAnother approach you could try to unmask the real identity is perform some statistical analysis on the posting of both Akita T and Lord XSiV to fingerprint their writing styles and compare to see if they are the same person.

Of course you would need lots of sample material to base the analysis off. There are tools to help, there is a quick and dirty demonstration script called 'Unmask' available from here

Thanks for the link! That is actually why I reserved the post immediately after my analysis - I'm planning on running some analysis of the kind you mentioned. I'm currently playing with JGAAP, and will check out that "Unmask" program too. While datamining, I captured all the post content (sans html tags and embedded quotes) so that an analysis like this could be performed. Especially considering Akita's 21,000 odd posts, there is plenty of material to work with :)

Interesting trends can be found from just looking at the data too. For instance, Akita has a habit of beginning sentences with "Actually, <rest of post>"

Originally by:Akita THmm, my timestamp graph is incredibly smooth... between 3% minimum and 5% maximum at all hours, yowza...

Yup, you need to sleep more and post less. To be honest, I thought my data was originally bugged because of that data, but alas, you just post a lot. And as I said, local max/mins tend to get smoothed over by the sheer quantity of posts, so there may be more interesting trends hiding underneath.

Originally by:ChribbaDon't forget...

Just wanted to say thanks for your Eve-Search site Chribba, it made compiling the data relatively painless. Check your OMG-Labs email though, I believe I found a bug in your RSS dates

Originally by:SetrakDarkIt's nice to see Goons partaking in the MD community in preparation for their retreat to hi-sec. I think it shows some foresight and etiquette, and I look forward to helping their many members arrange their future mining, production, and research enterprises.

Preparation? We've already packed our bags and the goon exodus back to Jita has begun. Didn't want that space anyway.

Originally by:Akita THmm, my timestamp graph is incredibly smooth... between 3% minimum and 5% maximum at all hours, yowza...

Yup, you need to sleep more and post less. To be honest, I thought my data was originally bugged because of that data, but alas, you just post a lot. And as I said, local max/mins tend to get smoothed over by the sheer quantity of posts, so there may be more interesting trends hiding underneath.

Actually, it's because I don't "live" on a 24-hour day (more like a 26-hour day on average, but it varies wildly from day to day and I occasionally "reset" to a "normal" sleep schedule for a while once in a blue moon), so in time, it does tend to smooth out nicely.

Originally by:Akita TActually, it's because I don't "live" on a 24-hour day (more like a 26-hour day on average, but it varies wildly from day to day and I occasionally "reset" to a "normal" sleep schedule for a while once in a blue moon), so in time, it does tend to smooth out nicely.

Ahh, that makes sense. Out of curiosity, does the timezone graph jive roughly with the timezone that you live in?

Posted - 2010.01.10 17:52:00 -
[25]As Azrel said I would go down the route of Computational Linguistics - there are alot of useful statistics that you can get when you have a reasonably sized database of texts - average sentence length, pareto analysis of word frequencies, etc.

Out of curiosity, do you do datamining for a RL job? Because you should.

Kinda sorta sometimes. I'm a biologist with some computer science training. My work occasionally deals with high-throughput assays which generate large volumes of data that have to be processed/mined. Never done anything like this before though :)

Originally by:KaaiiHe means in lue of logging in to help out your dieing brosefs in the field?

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